Free Mavis Belfrage by Alasdair Gray Page B

sort of thing happens all the time. I’m used to it.”
    â€œWhat brings you north of Soho?” asked Plenderleith.
    â€œExhaustion, Plendy-boy, sheer exhaustion. I can work myself into the ground like a pig when the mood is on me but periodically I’ve got to stop. I throw up whatever I’m in the middle of and go somewhere quiet and … just let my mind go totally blank. Like the yogis. A bit of eastern mysticism is a great antidote to the commercial rat race. Willie Maugham taught me that. Ever read him?”
    Again McCrimmon was looking at the teacher who replied that his field was maths and he hadn’t much time for reading nowadays.
    â€œSo you’re back in Glasgow for the eastern mysticism?” said Plenderleith drily.
    â€œI know what you people think of me,” McCrimmon said in a voice so quietly sincere that the three who knew him glanced uneasily at each other but relaxed when he said, “You think I’m a cynic. You think I’m a cynic because I’m dynamic and who ever heard of a dynamo with a heart? Well,
this
dynamo has a heart.” (He clapped a hand to his chest.) “No matter how far I travel I’ll always return to auld Scotia. A man needs roots. But,” he concluded, becoming less solemn and turning to the teacher again, “you ought to read Maugham. He was a great writer but a greater human being. I got on well with him, before the end.”
    â€œYou knew him?” said the teacher.
    â€œWhere’s that coffee of mine?” said McCrimmon looking round. “I keep forgetting how rotten the service is here. Yes, I knew old Willie Maugham. Beaverbrook introduced us.”
    The photographer concentrated on the teacher with the instinct of a performer finding an audience. The quiet departure of Jean, Tom and Plenderleith was hardly noticed by the two who remained, one spouting fluent monologues, the other inciting them with exclamations and questions.
4
    Four coffees later McCrimmon said, “And that is the true story of my last and worst encounter with Beaverbrook.”
    The teacher was excited and appalled. He had suspected great press barons were greedy, selfish and unscrupulous, but had not thought them petty, vindictive and superstitious.
    â€œAmazing – really amazing,” he murmured, “but I think the lassie wants us to leave.”
    The room was empty but for them and a bored waitress lounging near the till.
    â€œForget her – she kept me waiting for my coffee. I’m surprised that you haven’t asked why I’m back in Scotland.”
    â€œYou told us you were here to relax and meditate.”
    â€œDid I? So I did. I wasn’t being strictly accurate. There are better places to relax than smoky old Glasgow. No laddie. I’m here with a purpose.”
    McCrimmon pressed his lips together and nodded heavily.
    â€œIf you’d rather not tell me –” said the teacher after a silence.
    â€œKnow something? I like you. There’s not many I would waste my sweetness on but I think you’re what I would call trustworthy. Notice how many new buildings are going up nowadays?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd a lot more are going to go up which means even more old stuff will be hammered down. It’s inevitable. All progress is inevitable. But when these filthy oldtenements and warehouses and cinemas are replaced by motorways and multistorey flats and shopping centres folk are going to miss them, hence
this
little toy –” (McCrimmon tapped a camera case with his finger) “– I paid two hundred quid down for it and it’ll make my fortune. I will emerge as the Recording Angel of Glasgow’s recent past.”
    â€œYou won’t believe this,” said the teacher excitedly, “but I’ve thought of doing that!”
    McCrimmon seemed not to believe it or found it a negligible idea in others. He said, “I’ll show more than the buildings